Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach: The New Enterprise
- Thread starter Lowdarzz
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Oh, come off it. Church is a professional designer; there's nothing inherently more "Wars" than "Trek" in his blood, especially since he's done productions design for more than just these two films. And even if there were, exposure to Star Wars won't kill you, by the way.
I think Church is actually a better Trek designer than Wars designer. Judging by the work he did when he took over as lead designer for EPIII, he does better with smooth, organic designs than he does with the chunky "boilerplate" look of Star Wars.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Look at what happened to Trek when ILM started designing stuff for them in SFS ... except for the BOP (which is like a ship from EXPLORERS with wings added), they're awful, and the spacedock is ludicrous. ILM designers pissed all over Minor's design for the eden cave in TWOK and ruined it, but note they couldn't screw up his RELIANT.
There ARE good ILM designers, but their influence on Trek hasn't always been great (Bill George is pretty good.)
That's not actually what Rick said. He offered some initial criticism which he then revised when he was given more information (that the rest of us don't have yet):
http://trekmovie.com/2008/11/12/big-reaction-to-new-enterprise-new-designer-responds/
So he didn't say he was disappointed, just that he had concerns.
Hopefully Rick will drop by himself and offer some more thoughts.
One thing I'm curious about: The new E (the E-JJ?) borrows a lot of the detailing from the TMP E -- the stripes along the saucer edge, the visible hull plating, the round docking ports, the torpedo tubes, etc. My question is, who was responsible for coming up with those features on the TMP ship?
Plecostomus
Commodore
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Richard Taylor came up with the saucer edge art deco lines, and the new nacelle fronts, which are based on some old car.
Probet came up with zillions of torpedo tube versions (old ENTERPRISE INCIDENTS have several sketches, even one that has an openmouthed shark painted on the side of the tube) ... I don't know about the docking ports, but the hull plating was Trumbull's notion after he came on (though Taylor has said that was his intention all along.) Trumbull hired Paul Olsen to do the paint job, and Ron Gress helped him. It took months.
Wow, lot of posts in this thread. Probert and Sternbach must have really been going at it.
Plecostomus
Commodore
Honestly, the more I look at this comparison picture, the more it looks like the new ship isn't as out of proportion as it appears.
If you look at the base of the support pylon at the top of the secondary hull, the distance to the saucer appears to be about the same. And the overall diameter of the two secondary hulls look to be about the same as well.
Where I think the new picture is throwing us off is a combination of four things:
1. The underside curve of the secondary hull is a lot further forward forcing the look that the deflector dish has been moved in relation to the saucer.
2. The oversize support pylon (and structurally more realistic) swooping further back is also adding to the illusion of a smaller secondary hull. If you look at and compare the TOS secondary hull to the Refit, you'll notice that the TOS has a smaller overall O.D. (by about two decks).
3. The picture seems to also be a forced perspective, causing the parts of the ship to distort. Look as to how huge the saucer appears appears as it get closer to the "camera".
4. Over the years, we've seen the different incarnations of the Enterprise (and other starships), the one subtle thing that was happening, was that the designers kept moving the deflector dish back. Now that the new team is trying to somewhat keep with the original intent, a lot of fans are having a knee-jerk reaction.
I think the biggest mistake was just their choice in the initial picture released.
I recall when I first saw the Enterprise D, I had a similar "shock" reaction. I thought it looked like "melted art-deco". Though over time, I grew to appericate and love the design.
I'm mostly worried about the mismatch between the saucer and the rest of the design here. The secondary hull, the pylons and the engines look like they are coming from a 1950s automobile, which is splendid for science fiction when done right: the 1950s and partial 1930s retro was about the only thing in SWI-III that was graphically palatable, along with the bold decision to retain the mullet cuts. But the saucer is flat.
I mean, flat in every possible manner. They have taken away (most of) the ventral curvature, the characteristic if nonsensical undercut. They have introduced angles and steps to the upper and lower bulges, rectangular window arrangement in place of round or angled ones. The unfinished-looking aztecing defies the chromed look of the engines. To my tastes, the saucer part is too little altered from either the TOS or TMP standard to properly serve the aesthetic whole.
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, flat in every possible manner. They have taken away (most of) the ventral curvature, the characteristic if nonsensical undercut. They have introduced angles and steps to the upper and lower bulges, rectangular window arrangement in place of round or angled ones. The unfinished-looking aztecing defies the chromed look of the engines. To my tastes, the saucer part is too little altered from either the TOS or TMP standard to properly serve the aesthetic whole.
Timo Saloniemi
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
Nonsensical? I naturally disagree. How else is a circularly symmetric airfoil supposed to generate aerodynamic lift, whether it be for satelloid orbits in a planetary atmosphere (i.e., Tomorrow is Yesterday) or for post-separation controlled entry and landing on an M-Class world?
TGT
Umm, simply by virtue of angle of attack, if indeed aerodynamics are necessary at all. Any prissiness with undercuts is meaningless in the task of trying to hold something that heavy and slow airborne in the "Tomorrow is Yesterday" manner. Especially with the secondary hull and nacelles attached.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
They aren't in the usual sense for hypersonic velocities, but once you approach the speed of sound (assuming an Earth-like atmospheric composition and density profile) a lifting body becomes virtually mandatory for controllability even if the aerospace vehicle in question is equipped with fly-by-wire software assistance. This goes triple for subsonic flight regimes.
The nacelle pylons may also generate a certain amount of lift not unlike the tailplane of this Beechcraft Bonanza. With this in mind, has anybody ever analyzed their cross-sections on the Datin miniature? Incidentally, the deeper undercut along with the swept, thinner and broader pylons on the Refit strongly suggests - at least to me - improved aerodynamics to support a wider class of planetary "standard orbits".
TGT
Probert and Sternbach will be the first ones to tell you that all of the Enterprises (and lead starships like Voyager), especially from the films onward, have been designed by "committee" -- executive producers, studio suits, the director, model makers, etc. all give their input into a design. For instance, Jeri Taylor told Sternbach to make Voyager more curvy, like a luxury sportscar, after the design got so far as building a study model.
ST-One
Vice Admiral
I agree. It's not as different as it might initially seem. For one thing, it does look like the distance from the base of the neck to the deflector dish isn't as different from the original as it seemed at first glance. And I agree that the difference in perspective is clearly a factor as well; it's amazing how many people are forgetting about something as simple as perspective. Also, that photo caption's reference to "chrome nacelle caps" is very naive; far more likely is that the nacelle caps simply aren't lit.
People who are predisposed to find fault are having no trouble reading faults into this, but they're exaggerating or misunderstanding a lot. Thanks for lending some perspective (so to speak).
Oh, yes, absolutely. That's how the design process in film and TV works. It's never just one person. It's a whole back-and-forth where the design team does dozens or hundreds of sketches and test models and the producers or director give input to guide the process. Heck, we've known that since the '60s -- The Making of Star Trek told us about how Pato Guzman and Matt Jefferies did a whole slew of sketches, with Roddenberry picking the ones he favored. His approvals guided them in the direction of the ship we ended up with.
Sure, Probert's Enterprise-D started out with a design he'd created years before TNG, but he still modified that design to reflect the wishes of the producers -- for instance, radically redesigning the neck so that the battle section could work as a separate, standalone ship.
Before I'm going to say anything else, this is the single part I'm referring to:
1) There's a comitee that makes a design and tells the artist everything that he has to do, and that's how I interpreted that sentence.
2) There's a comitee that looks over the designers shoulder while he's working and says *we don't like that, change it*.
Now, that's two VERY different things, and I think you can all bear with me how I explained mr. Sternbach's reply on the matter. The latter point is nothing more than logical, but it's the first point I was annoyed by. If Sternbach's designs were ALL made in the same way as this Enterprise was, then why would he make a remark like that? Doesn't make much sense, right?
And come on, Sternbach saying *sigh* as his first reply? Doesthat sound like he's being disapointed or concerned? You know my answer I think...
By the way, the mod with the decals makes it so much better, I'd start a petition just for giving us our decals back, instead of a complete hull remake.
Now, IMO, there's two different things:
1) There's a comitee that makes a design and tells the artist everything that he has to do, and that's how I interpreted that sentence.
2) There's a comitee that looks over the designers shoulder while he's working and says *we don't like that, change it*.
Now, that's two VERY different things, and I think you can all bear with me how I explained mr. Sternbach's reply on the matter. The latter point is nothing more than logical, but it's the first point I was annoyed by. If Sternbach's designs were ALL made in the same way as this Enterprise was, then why would he make a remark like that? Doesn't make much sense, right?
And come on, Sternbach saying *sigh* as his first reply? Doesthat sound like he's being disapointed or concerned? You know my answer I think...
By the way, the mod with the decals makes it so much better, I'd start a petition just for giving us our decals back, instead of a complete hull remake.
I thought that was Harve Bennetts fault, didnt he look at the concept sketch upside down and signed it for approval, when they got it back they knew he had seen it the wrong way up so kept it that way
^^Which is an amazing parallel to the approval process for the original Enterprise -- Jefferies' sketch actually had the saucer and nacelles on the bottom, but when he whipped up the first test model out of wood, it somehow got hung upside-down, and that was the version Roddenberry approved.
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